"No part of the U.S. will escape the harsh consequences of climate change, which has already begun to cause trouble from Alaska to Florida, and from Maine to Hawaii, and which will worsen as the century goes on. But according to a report released January 28, the nation’s coastlines -- Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific and Great Lakes -- are likely to get the worst of it."

"The reason, said Virginia Burkett, a coastal wetland ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and one of the report’s two lead authors, in an interview, is largely because the coasts are such hotspots of development."